Images of father, mother, and child of undergraduates and their mothers and fathers : Analysis of data collected from 2001 to 2006

埼玉県越谷市Analyzed were data on undergraduates and their mothers and fathers concerning the respectiveevaluation of their own mothers and fathers as a parent, spouse, homemaker, career employee, andmember of society, the degree they expected them to carry out those roles, and their own imagesof children. Images of the roles of married men and women are said to have greatly changed fromtraditional sex-typed roles to postmodern gender roles over the last thirty or forty years. Imagesof children are also said to have changed. The percentage of people who regard having children asa social norm have apparently decreased over the same period. This study first sought to examinewhether these trends are borne out by data. In all three data, though, the highest scores for evaluationof one's father and mother were those for a career employee and a mother, which are traditional sextypedroles. The highest scores of expectations for fathers and mothers were for them as parents.Undergraduates' scores of expectations for all roles were higher than their fathers' and mothers'scores. Thus, scores for evaluation of one's parents' roles and expectations of them did not reflectthe above trend. Undergraduates' scores of the image of children as a social norm were lower thantheir fathers' and mothers'. This result appears to reflect the trend in changing images of children.This study also sought to examine the relationship among the scores for evaluation of parental rolesand images of children. Results revealed that undergraduates' scores of the images of children wereinfluenced by their parents' scores of equivalent scales and their own scores of evaluation of theirfathers and mothers